Friday, September 18, 2009

Guy Croteau: unlikely anti-hero

You know Guy Croteau was the catalyst for all of this. I had the idea to look again at Theresa's case but I waffled for many years. In in mid 90s my brother looked at it - went to Sherbrooke, met with people - met with Roch Gaudreault! Everyone's favorite SQ inspector!

At that time Roch was working at the University of Sherbrooke as an investigative instructor to young police cadets (go figure). Andre talked to my Dad, Robert Buellac, students, etc... but they were all working on a drug theory so it went nowhere.

So in the Summer of 2001 I called up the SQ from my office in North Carolina. They told me they'd try to find Theresa's file, but I would have to come to Quebec to see it (I asked them to mail me a copy!).

Then 9/11 hit and everyone was grounded.

Finally I got a phone call from Patricia Pearson in February of 2002 (I had spoken to her about the case, but at this point she was not on-board to do a story - I was actually pursuing Malcolm Gladwell to do it (who wrote Tipping Point and Blink; we went to school together).

So Patricia leaves this message, "I heard that the Quebec police have a murder suspect in custody and they want to talk to your family about a possible connection to your sister's case.". I hit the roof. THIS is how cold-cases get solved! I call the police. Patricia's message is sort of true: yes, the SQ have a guy in custody, a guy named Guy Croteau - who murdered Sophie Landry - and they are going back and looking at any unsolved case from the last 30 years to see if they can pin anything else to him.

At this point the SQ don't even know Theresa Allore existed. And it gets better, they have a "special hot line" phone number posted online where you can call to leave possible information linking Croteau. Man, I phoned that number a half dozen times, I left messages with the main offices in Montreal and Sherbrooke, I begged them to contact me... BECAUSE I HAD INFORMATION THEY WERE REQUESTING. They would never get back with me.